Aliens are invading earth and its military has formed a United Defence Force with one trick up its sleeve, PACIFIC RIM-lite super-soldier suits. A slick adman called Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) is a self-proclaimed coward drafted into a Normandy-style attack on the enemy position. He dies, but is looped back to the start of his deployment and soon realises that he needs to make contact with Emily Blunt's war heroine, Rita. She too went through the time-looping and realised that the Aliens are winning the war by resetting and replaying their attack every time they die. She and now Cage have somehow hijacked the ability to reset and by doing so can now win the war. She therefore sets about training Cage to be a military hero, shooting him to reset the day so that they can start again.
I'll go on the record and say that I have deep problems with Tom Cruise and that this kind of CGI heavy action movie is not something I usually connect with, but I really enjoyed EDGE OF TOMORROW. Part of that is to do with seeing Tom Cruise on the back foot for the first half of the movie, playing a cowardly doofus who is literally getting beaten up by a girl. But the other half is seeing just how cleverly the director Doug Liman (THE BOURNE IDENTITY) handles the time loop story. Because let's be honest, this concept could've gotten pretty boring pretty early, and actually pretty smug. Nobody wants to see Tom Cruise lord it over everyone as he cannily predicts just what they're going to do before they do it. But somehow, Liman keeps everything on track and tense and actually emotionally evolving. The payoff comes in the final scene, which I won't spoil, but where we'd actually seen emotional growth. I really enjoyed the journey.
EDGE OF TOMORROW has a running time of 113 minutes and is rated PG-13. The movie is on global release.
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